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Nether   Listen
adjective
Nether  adj.  Situated down or below; lying beneath, or in the lower part; having a lower position; belonging to the region below; lower; under; opposed to upper. "'Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires." "This darksome nether world her light Doth dim with horror and deformity." "All my nether shape thus grew transformed."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Nether" Quotes from Famous Books



... the depths of human passion, and learn the sublime lesson of endurance. We are charmed with an ode of Horace, perfect in rhythm, perfect in sentiment, perfect in diction, and perfect in moral; the condensed essence of volumes in a single page. We walk with Dante through the nether world, awed by the tremendous power with which he depicts for us the secrets of the prison house. With Milton, we mount heaven-ward, and in the immortal verse of his minor poems, finer even than the stately march of Paradise ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... me. The wistful, appealing look still lingered in her eyes. The soft red nether lip ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... I have especiall cawse. Yow shall ffrende me muche in helpeing me out of all the debettes I owe in London, I thancke God, and muche quyet my mynde, which wolde nott be indebeted. I am nowe towardes the Cowrte, in hope of answer for the dispatch of my buysness. Yow shall nether loase creddytt nor monney by me, the Lord wyllinge; and nowe butt persuade yourselfe soe, as I hope, and you shall nott need to feare, butt, with all hartie thanckefullness, I wyll holde my tyme, and content yowr ffrende, and yf we bargaine farther, you shal be the ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes

... was just coming into view, having been detained round the corner by his curiosity concerning a set of Louis XVI. furniture which some house-movers were unpacking upon the sidewalk. A curl of excelsior, in fact, had attached itself to his nether lip, and he was pausing to remove it—when his roving eye fell upon Flopit. Clematis immediately decided to let the excelsior remain where it was, lest he miss something ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington

... he would say, "but we people of mixed blood are ground between the upper and the nether millstone. Our fate lies between absorption by the white race and extinction in the black. The one doesn't want us yet, but may take us in time. The other would welcome us, but it would be for us a backward step. 'With malice towards none, with charity for all,' we must ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... Christianity from the Apocryphal New Testament. This tradition is still held by the Israelites, says Mr. Rodwell (p. 333) who refers it to a misunderstanding of Exod. xix. 17, rightly rendered in the E. version "at the nether part of the mountain." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... women who sat in a corner on the ground grinding at a stone mill. Near by stood a man selling the cakes new made from the meal the women had ground. It was hard work turning the handles that pressed the meal between the upper and nether millstones, and the women ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips

... with a look of the bitterest, deepest anger, holding his nether lip tightly under his teeth—a trick he had when strongly moved with anger—and the Bishop's eyes fell under the look. Meantime the Earl of Alban stood calm and silent. No doubt he saw that the King's anger was likely to befriend ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle

... cast their grey shadows below—shadows which seemed to crush that colorless and sullen water by their weight. Anything more suggestive of gloom and of regions of nether darkness I never beheld. Silvery rays of electric light, reflected here and there upon some small spots of water, brought up luminous sparkles in the long wake of our cumbrous bark. Presently we were wholly out of sight of land; not a vestige could be seen, nor any indication of where ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne

... The position in which he painted it was delightful. She was lying on her stomach, her arms and her bosom leaning on a pillow, and holding her head sideways as if she were partly on the back. The clever and tasteful artist had painted her nether parts with so much skill and truth that no one could have wished for anything more beautiful; I was delighted with that portrait; it was a speaking likeness, and I wrote under it, "O-Morphi," not a Homeric word, but a Greek one after ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... King of the gods, Prophet of Khem, of Ammon-Ra, bull of his mother, in his great abode, Asar-aau, justified, Son of the Prophet of the same order, Nes-paut-ta-ti, justified, Conceal (it), conceal (it)! Let it not be read by anyone. It is profitable to the person who is in the divine Nether-World. He liveth in ...
— Egyptian Literature

... a man, an open brow, a clear eye, a firm-set mouth, and a chin that neither aims to meet the nose nor lags back upon the breast; and I will dub him honest, and brave, and clean-minded. But if his forehead skulks backward, his chin recedes, and his nether lip curls over redly—though the other traits be handsome, and the figure full of grace and strength controlled—trust that man I never could! Such an one I saw once in my early childhood. My mother pointed him out to me and bade me ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock

... perhaps you know, was the triple-headed dog that guarded the entrance to the nether world. To bring up this three-headed monster from the land of the dead was the last of the twelve labors. It was ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... interest and close scrutiny to the little knots of volunteers who had sauntered in to pick up points. To the former it looked odd and out of gear to see the forage-caps and broad white stripes of commissioned officers mingling with the slouch hats and ill-fitting nether garments of the rank ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King

... bushes growing in a broad space at the foot of the towering limestone wall. These bushes were heavy with dew. There were also concealed mudholes in there. We crept and tumbled and felt about with our hands along the ground. We got wet, scratched, and plastered with mire all over our nether garments. Fyne fell suddenly into a strange cavity—probably a disused lime-kiln. His voice uplifted in grave distress sounded more than usually rich, solemn and profound. This was the comic relief of an absurdly dramatic situation. While hauling him ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... faith, no seed of love, No lonely action nobly done, But is as stable as the sun, And fed and watered from above; From nether base to starry cope Nature's two laws are Faith ...
— The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne

... was a solemn day for me to pass from the humble tenement where Coleridge lived, at Nether Stowey, before the cloud of sad habit had darkened his horizon, and turned him away from the wells of poetry into the deserts of metaphysical speculation, to find, if he could, some medicine for ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... brought me some maize porridge and a skin of water. I could eat little of the food, but I drank the water to the last drop, for my throat was as dry as the nether pit. After that I lay down on my couch again, for it seemed to me that I would need to treasure every atom of my strength. The meal had put a little heart in me—heart enough to wait dismally on ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... One stays in the riacho; no longer to look after fish, but with both wings outspread over the surface of the stream, beating the water into froth—as it does so, all the while drawing nearer and nearer to the nether bank! But its movements are convulsive and involuntary, as can be told by something seen around its neck resembling a rope. And a rope it is; the youths knowing it to be the lazo they late saw coiled over Caspar's arm, knowing also ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... in like manner dyd somwhat yeld. Wherupon with all expedition he was unarmed in the field, even against the place where I stode.... I noted him to be very weake, and to have the sens of all his lymmes almost benommed; for being caryed away, as he lay along, nothing covered but his face, he moved nether hand nor fote, but laye as one amased." Letter to the Council, June 30 and July 1, 1559, Forbes, State ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... he my son, He would not shed a tear! He would remember The cliff where he was bred, and learned to scan A thousand fathoms' depth of nether air; Where he was trained to hear the thunder talk, And meet the lightning, eye to eye; where last We spoke together, when I told him death Bestowed the brightest gem that graces life, Embraced for virtue's sake. He shed ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... time they had been filled to repletion with meat. And Bombay was by no means in the best of humour; flesh-pots full of meat were more to his taste than a constant tramping, and its consequent fatigues. I saw his face settle into sulky ugliness, and his great nether lip hanging down limp, which meant as if expressed in so many words, "Well, get them to move yourself, you wicked hard man! I shall ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... once, and the most experienced veteran of your corps may, by recollecting his first publication, renovate his first terrors, and learn to allow for mine. For though Courage is one of the noblest virtues of this nether sphere; and though scarcely more requisite in the field of battle, to guard the fighting hero from disgrace, than in the private commerce of the world, to ward off that littleness of soul which leads, by steps imperceptible, to all the base train of the ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... city to the sepulchres. There he with his own hands draws water from the well, washes the head-stones of the graves, and anoints them with oil. After this he cuts the throat of the bull, places his bones on a funeral pile, and with prayer to Zeus, and Hermes who conducts men's souls into the nether world, he calls on the brave men who died for Greece, to come to the feast and drink the libations of blood. Next he mixes a large bowl of wine and water, pours out a cup for himself, and says, "I drink to those who died in defence of the ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... saved the world in saving France, France that was Europe's dawn when light was none, Clear eyes that with eternal vigilance Pierce through the webs in nether darkness spun, Soul of man's soul, his sentinel upon The ramparts of the world: Ah! France, 'twas well This soldier with the sword of Gabriel Was yours and ours in all that dire duresse, This soldier, gentle as a child, that here Stands shy and smiling 'mid a world's ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne

... Sioux. There by the path side, cropping the dewy grass, was the trained pony. Here, lounging by the trail, the thick black braids of his hair interlaced with beads, the quill gorget heaving at his massive throat; the heavy blanket slung negligently, gracefully about his stalwart form; his nether limbs and feet in embroidered buckskin, his long-lashed quirt in hand; here stood, almost confronting him, as fine a specimen of the warrior of the Plains as it had ever been Trooper Kennedy's lot to see, and see them he had—many ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... 'cocksure' (Rogers), of 'smug', which once meant no more than adorned ("the smug bridegroom", Shakespeare). 'To nap' is now a word without dignity; while yet in Wiclif's Bible it is said, "Lo he schall not nappe, nether slepe that kepeth Israel" (Ps. cxxi. 4). 'To punch', 'to thump', both of which, and in serious writing, occur in Spenser, could not now obtain the same use, nor yet 'to wag', or 'to buss'. Neither would any ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... her ears he murmured his last wailing complaint. "If she had the fear of God before her eyes, she would come back to me." "Let us pray that He may soften her heart," said the old lady. "Eh, mother;—nothing can soften the heart Satan has hardened, till it be hard as the nether millstone." And in that faith he died believing, as he had ever believed, that the spirit of evil was stronger than the ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... Scripture it is forbidden to pledge the upper or the nether mill-stone. This is a proof, of very great antiquity, and indisputable authority, of the care taken to prevent that sort of improvidence that hurts the general interest of a people. It should be imitated in this country with regard, to all portable ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair

... overspread the boy's face as he glanced at his companion, for he knew well that the old gentleman cared little or nothing for water. And this was obviously the case, for, after squeezing as much water out of his nether garments as chose to come, he proceeded to the head of the ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne

... the Upper House," he said, "and you my masters of the Nether House, here is present the Right Reverend Father in God the Lord Cardinal Pole, come from the Apostolic See of Rome as ambassador to the king's and queen's majesties, upon one of the weightiest ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... ploughed a little, till the share struck against something and the beasts stopped. He goaded them on, but they could not move the plough; so he looked at the share and finding it caught in a ring of gold, cleared away the soil and saw that it was set centre-most a slab of alabaster, the size of the nether millstone. He strave at the stone till he pulled it from its place, when there appeared beneath it a souterrain with a stair. Presently he descended the flight of steps and came to a place like a Hammam, with four daises, the first full of gold, from ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... winter. The figure of the underground deity appears to have taken shape from the combination of two mythological conceptions—the underground fructifying forces of nature, and the assemblage of the dead in a nether world or kingdom.[1349] His only moral significance lay in his relation to oaths, wherein, perhaps, is an approach to the idea of a divine ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... Moriarty that King Corny, not having the use of his nether limbs, could not attend even in his gouty chair to administer the medicines he had made, and to see them fairly swallowed. Sheelah, whose conscience was easy on this point, contented herself with giving him a strict charge to "take every bottle to the last drop." ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... instructed so to do, a hearing, must obey certain sumptuary laws, for not only must he don the horsehair wig, the gown, and bands of his profession, but his upper clothing must be black, nor should his nether garment be otherwise than of sober hue. Mr. Oswald reports Mr. Justice Byles as having once observed to the late Lord Coleridge whilst at the Bar: 'I always listen with little pleasure to the arguments of counsel whose ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... beat the other, or having beaten one half he would be too weak to fall on the other. There was always the danger that the trap would be sprung, that he would be caught in its jaws or, to change the metaphor, that he would be like the wheat between the upper and the nether millstone. Still he did not think so, and he did not go into the undertaking blindly. As he had said, in his own case, "War was not a conjectural art," and he had most carefully counted the cost, estimated the probabilities. In short, he looked well before he ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... was caught by the leg, the moment he left the track, by a wait-a-bit thorn—most appropriately so-called, because its powerful spikes are always ready to seize and detain the unwary passer-by. In the present instance it checked the seaman's career for a few seconds, and rent his nether garments sadly; while Harold, profiting by his friend's misfortune, leaped over the bush, and passed on. Disco quickly extricated himself, ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne

... over the contents with deep interest and a changing countenance. He laid them down and took them up again, perused them a second time, and passed them over to the Intendant, who read them with a start of surprise and a sudden frown on his dark eyebrows. But he instantly suppressed it, biting his nether lip, however, with anger which he could ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... at the mouth of the cave—we should have been released from our entombment, only to look once more at the sun. He paid the price of our ransom, to the uttermost farthing, in his lingering death. Had he killed himself on the spot, he would have taken our only slender chance with him into that nether world where he imagined himself to have been "precipitated alive." Finding him dead, we should have gone on. Less than ten minutes, no more than another ten paces beyond the spot, we should have ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... that before granting the investiture of that kingdom, they bound its king by oath not to compete for the Empire.[261] But a third candidate would offer an escape from between the upper and the nether mill-stone; and Leo suggested at one time Charles's brother Ferdinand,[262] at another a German elector. Precisely the same recommendations had been secretly made by Henry VIII. In public he followed the course he commended ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... singularly dramatic and impressive. In this narrow theatre of war were now being rendered, with all the leading actors on the stage, the closing scenes of that great and bloody tragedy. Grant on the north and Sherman on the south were grinding Lee and Johnston between them like upper and nether millstones. ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... livery, but was dressed in a coat of pepper-and-salt, with waistcoat of canary colour, and nether garments of iron-grey; besides these glories, he shone in the lustre of a new pair of boots and an extremely stiff and shiny hat. And in this attire, rather wondering that he attracted so little attention, he made ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... into the room, and was closely followed by a little man in brown, very much the worse for wear, who brought with him a mingled fumigation of stale tobacco and fresh onions. The clothes of this gentleman were much bespeckled with flue; and his shoes, stockings, and nether garments, from his heels to the waist buttons of his coat inclusive, were profusely embroidered with splashes of mud, caught a fortnight previously—before the setting-in ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... few dry fagots were brought, and a new fire kindled with fagots, (for there were no more reeds) and those burned at the nether parts, but had small power above, because of the wind, saving that it burnt his hair, and scorched his skin a little. In the time of which fire, even as at the first flame, he prayed, saying mildly, and not very loud, but as one without pain, O Jesus, Son of David, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... they say the women doe desire them. They were inuented because they should not abuse the male sexe. For in times past all those countries were so giuen to that villany, that they were very scarce of people. It was also ordained that the women should not haue past three cubits of cloth in their nether clothes, which they binde about them; which are so strait, that when they go in the streets, they shew one side of the leg bare aboue the knee. [Sidenote: Anthony Galuano writeth of these bals.] The bunches aforesayd be of diuers sorts: the least be as ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt

... what shall oblige thy sight, And fill thy eyeballs with a vast delight, Is the poetic judge of sacred wit, Who does i' th' darkness of his glory sit; And as the moon who first receives the light, With which she makes these nether regions bright, So does he shine, reflecting from afar The rays he borrowed from a better star; For rules, which from Corneille and Rapin flow, Admired by all the scribbling herd below, From French tradition while he does dispense Unerring truths, 'tis schism, a ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... heaven the Chorus invoke Sanctity, crowned as goddess in the nether world, to hear the awful words of Pentheus, uttered against the immortal son of Semele, first and best of gods, ruler of the flower-crowned feast, and the dance's jocund strife, and the laughter, and the sparkling wine-cup, and the sweet sleep that follows the festival. ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton

... know? I, too, am frightened sometimes. The justice of God is exerted in this nether world as well as in the next. What mercy can I expect at God's hands? His vengeance overtakes the guilty in many ways; it assumes every aspect of disaster. That is what my mother told me on her death-bed, speaking of her own old age.—But if I should lose you," she added, hugging Crevel ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... the nether world—the name later used to designate the gloomy subterranean land of ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... whose perpendicular feather was on a level with the Squire's shoulder—luring fair lasses complacently conscious of very short waists and skirts blameless of front-folds—luring burly fathers in large variegated waistcoats, and ruddy sons, for the most part shy and sheepish, in short nether garments ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot

... with his sunken eyes, his loose nether lip dropping, his poor old bent knees bowed so that they seemed scarcely able to sustain his weight; the rusty skin, which had once been of so glossy a sable, was scratched and torn ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)

... many places, created crimson lakes where, instead of boats, blood-stained bodies floated with yawning wounds. It seemed as if the Styx had flowed to Lobau to spare the ferryman Charon the arduous task of conveying so many corpses to the nether world, and for the purpose transformed itself into a single ...
— A Conspiracy of the Carbonari • Louise Muhlbach

... returned Mrs. Aylward, whom anxiety had made confidential; "for I own I was prejudiced against her from the first, as, if you'll excuse me, ma'am, all we Bowstead people are apt to be set against whatever comes from my Lady's side. However, one must have been made of the nether millstone not to feel the difference she made in the house. She was the very life of it with her pretty ways, singing and playing with the children, and rousing up the poor gentleman too that had lived just like a mere heathen in a dungeon, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... to the low brow, oval olive cheek of the Mediterranean, and the coal-black hue and flat nose of the Bight of Benin. Their dress was uniform—frock collars cut square and thrown well back over their ample chests; their nether limbs incased in clean duck or brown linen trowsers, with silk sashes around their waists, and large gold rings in their ears. Mingled here and there in the moving throng, or leaning over the large ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... silk, velvet, satin, and damask, reaching below the knees. So costly are these that "now it is a small matter to bestow twenty nobles, ten pound, twenty pound, fortie pound, yea a hundred pound of one pair of Breeches. (God be merciful unto us!)" To these gay hose they add nether-socks, curiously knit with open seams down the leg, with quirks and clocks about the ankles, and sometimes interlaced with gold and silver thread as is wonderful to behold. Time has been when a man could clothe his whole body for ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... commenced a mathematical description of the ingredients of the mixture, when suddenly there came a fierce blow from behind, which well nigh tilted him deep into the foaming liquid. I grabbed the broad expanse of his nether garments, while the wench screamed, and was only quieted when she found him safe under her broad lee. A deep sonorous voice responded:—'Stir quicker in the feed!' I turned to see from whence it came, and who had dealt thus unmercifully with the General, when behold! ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... yellow impenetrableness a hull rose abruptly, a vague dark mass almost within touching distance. Julia stood on deck and listened while the little Dutch boat crept up; she found something fascinating in this strange, shrouded river, haunted, like a stream of the nether world, with lamentable bodiless voices. The fog had delayed them, of course; the afternoon was now far advanced; they had been compelled to wait some long time while the tide was down, and even now that it was coming up, they could go but slowly. The last through train to Marbridge ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... know why I said it," she responded, nervously biting her nether lip. Then she smiled, her white teeth gleaming against the carmine. "She'll be back presently, ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... grew hopelessly dark and disconsolate. Miss Wardour had by this time entered the apartment, and fixing her eyes on Mr. Oldbuck, as if she meant to read her fate in his looks, easily perceived, from the change in his eye, and the dropping of his nether-jaw, how ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... the ragged state of her nerves as she cut the stalks of the beautiful flowers which came daily without name or message. The dog's method of expressing himself was somewhat more violent; it consisted of the sudden seizure between his great teeth of the posterior portion of the nether garments of low-caste males, ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest

... the West the Sun's last beam, As, weary, to the nether world he goes, And mountain-summits catch the purple gleam, And slumbering ocean faint ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... teacheth them how to apparel every part of the body with this armour. He beginneth yet again, saying, "Be strong, having your reins, or your loins girded about." Some men of war use to have about their loins an apron or girdle of mail, gird fast for the safeguard of the nether part of their body. So St. Paul would we should gird our loins, which betokeneth lechery or other sinfulness, with a girdle, which is to be taken for a restraint or continence from such vices. In "truth," or "truly gird:" it may not ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer

... Brother Jarrum, Peckaby assumed a lordly indifference to it, and protested he'd rather starve, nor have pison like him in the house. Peckaby, however, possessed a wife, who, on occasion, wore, metaphorically speaking, his nether garments, and it was her will and pleasure to countenance the expected guest. Brother Jarrum, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... had never been born? Many a one has given hearty utterance to that wish with less cause. Many a one of those just tottering into childhood will live to give utterance to the same. But the great wheel of fate turns ever relentlessly on. It drags us up from the nether mysterious depths; we sport and struggle and writhe and rejoice, as it bears us into the flashing blaze of life's meridian; then, with awful surety, it hurries us down, drags us under, once more into the abysses of silence and of mystery. Happy he who ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... of course, to hate him, but do we? A murderer he has written himself down. A liar he stands self-convicted of being. Were any one in the nether world bold enough to call him thief, it may be doubted whether Rhadamanthus would award him the damages for which we may be certain he would loudly clamor. Why do we not hate him? Listen ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... mountain-pool, perhaps the crater of an extinct volcano; into whose black deeps you fear to gaze: those eyes, those lights that sparkle in it, may indeed be reflexes of the heavenly Stars, but perhaps also glances from the region of Nether Fire. ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... leered down upon the Archdeacon. The rain trickled down over their naked twisted bodies, running in rivulets behind their outstanding ears, lodging for a moment on the projection of their hideous nether lips. They grinned down upon the Archdeacon, amused that he should have difficulty, there in the rain, in finding his key. "Pah!" they heard him mutter, and then, perhaps, something worse. The key was found, and he had then to bend his great height to squeeze through ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... boat Sails as I sail, floats as I float; Silent and dim and mystic still, It steals through that weird nether-world, Mocking my power, though at my will The foam before its prow is curled, Or calm ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... mirror, then; it is a Venetian mirror from Murano, the true nosce teipsum, as I have named it, compared with which the finest mirror of steel or silver is mere darkness. See now, how by diligent shaving, the nether region of your face may preserve its human outline, instead of presenting no distinction from the physiognomy of a bearded owl or a Barbary ape. I have seen men whose beards have so invaded their cheeks, that one might have pitied them as ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... her to appropriately name the air-ships after the winged angels and air-spirits of Moslem and other Eastern mythologies. The flagship she named the Ithuriel, after the angel who was sent to seek out and confound the Powers of Darkness in that terrific conflict between the upper and nether worlds, which was a fitting antetype to the colossal struggle which was now to be waged for the empire of ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... bitterly. "But what does it amount to? There is not a sign of one of these young people 'coming forward.' Just think, only one young man a member of the church, and he hasn't got much spunk in him. And many of the older men remain as hard as the nether millstone." ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... is going, eh?" he bit his nether lip, "and that is why he promised to bring the fifty thousand to-morrow morning. Well, somehow I don't think Pinto will go," he spoke deliberately. "I ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace

... that season. Perhaps the wind was a point or two to the north of west, if it makes any difference, and during the intervals there was always a comparative calm or slackening of the wind. I was once taken by one of these storm-clouds about Nether Libberton, on the Dalkeith road. I used the spur a little; and, having been a yeoman for many years, I was unconsciously holding a small rattan cane somewhat after the mode of "carry swords." Roused by the velocity of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various

... time he was arguing with Miss Hernshaw in his nether consciousness, pleading with her to keep her away from the fact that he had himself bought St. Johnswort, until he could frame some fitting form in which to tell her that he had bought it. With his outward eyes, he saw her drooping on the ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells

... what is meant by forgiveness. This is why forgiveness is so divine a thing. This is the reason why, when an act of genuine forgiveness occurs, "the music of the spheres" seems to become audible in our nether world. And this is also the reason why we often see such a strange kind of tie springing up between a person who has been chastised and the one who has chastised him in the right spirit and then forgiven him—a tie into which there enters shame for the wrong done, gratitude ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler

... and all the nether gods, if it were mine some of you should feed the lampreys," said the Emperor, looking round with his fierce eyes at the shrinking slaves. "You were always overmerciful, Emilius. It is the common talk that your catenoe are rusted for want of use. But surely this is beyond ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... was reached at last, and never a mule or camel left on the way. There were some salt-water puddles at the end of the worst part of it, and in these the men contrived to wash the mud off their limbs before resuming their nether garments. Ward the quartermaster was there before them; and he had a rough tent in which to receive the officers of the two companies, and he treated them to ginger-beer and tea. Ward was an old campaigner, who had seen no end of service—been frozen in the Crimea, broiled in ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... cat. A little rivulet seems to steal Down through a thing you call a vale, Like tears adown a wrinkled cheek, Like rain along a blade of leek: And this you call your sweet meander, Which might be suck'd up by a gander, Could he but force his nether bill To scoop the channel of the rill. For sure you'd make a mighty clutter, Were it as big as city gutter. Next come I to your kitchen garden, Where one poor mouse would fare but hard in; And round this garden is a walk No longer than a tailor's ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... heart, as that great mysterious one possesses it, the tempter-god and born rat-catcher of consciences, whose voice can descend into the nether-world of every soul, who neither speaks a word nor casts a glance in which there may not be some motive or touch of allurement, to whose perfection it pertains that he knows how to appear,—not as he is, but in a guise which acts as an ADDITIONAL ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... old cove, if you'll 'ave the goodness, Lightfoot, and don't call me an old cove, nether. Such words ain't used in society; and we have lived in the fust society, both at 'ome and foring. We've been intimate with the fust statesmen of Europe. When we go abroad we dine with Prince Metternitch and Louy Philup reg'lar. We go here to the best houses, the tip-tops, I tell ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... meeting of the two poets was that the Wordsworths shifted their abode from Racedown to Alfoxden, near Nether Stowey, in Somersetshire, to be near Coleridge. Alfoxden was a large furnished mansion, which the brother and sister had to themselves. 'We are three miles from Stowey, the then abode of Coleridge,' writes the sister, 'and two miles from the sea. ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth

... in the twenty-four in assiduous labor. He would take no active part in any matter—would engage in the discussion of no topic—and would not commit himself on any question—until he had sounded it to its nether depths, and explored all its ramifications, all its bearings and influences, and had thoroughly become master of the subject. To gain this information no toil was too great, no application too severe. It was in this manner that he was enabled to overwhelm with ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... dreamily watching that army of shadows gliding stealthily by. Shadows they seemed as they moved hurriedly along under the gloom of the overhanging trees, as noiseless almost as an army of spirits from Homer's nether world. The mystery of this secret night march served to quicken imagination, and I could see this same column grimly marshaling in "battle's magnificently stern array" in the dim light of the coming morning, ready to burst upon some exposed point ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride

... relations of production, of exchange, and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx

... meeting place of two conditions of consciousness: the foam and flotsam "of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn," whose vastitude, whose hidden life, and rich argosies of experience, can only be inferred from the fret of the tide on their nether shore—the ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... instance: she seemed so set on Miss Elisabeth that you'd have thought she'd have left her a trifle; but not she! All she had went to her sister, Miss Maria, who'd got quite enough already. Miss Anne was as sweet and gentle a lady as you'd wish to see; but her will was as hard as the nether millstone." ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... do you come?" he asked in a hollow voice. "Are you a spirit from the vasty deep, or have you risen from the nether world?" ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston

... buttoned his coat over it; and, finally, no man of any pretension to fashion wore nankeen trousers. Well-dressed men wore charming fancy materials or immaculate white, and every one had straps to his trousers, while the shrunken hems of Lucien's nether garments manifested a violent antipathy for the heels of boots which they wedded with obvious reluctance. Lucien wore a white cravat with embroidered ends; his sister had seen that M. du Hautoy and M. de Chandour wore such things, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... you won't!" she repeated, standing staring at me, as I leisurely, but with hands trembling partly with fear, partly with rage, was fastening my nether garments to my waistcoat. "That's all very fine, but I know something a good deal finer. ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald

... allow me, that it were better our Lord were nowhere, than torturing in His inscrutable wisdom, to all eternity, so many myriads of us poor devils, the creatures of His hands. Do not cross thyself so thickly, Francesco! nor hang down thy nether lip so loosely, languidly, and helplessly; for I would be a good Catholic, alive or dead. But, upon my conscience, it goes hard with me to think it of Him, when I hear that woodlark yonder, gushing with joyousness, or when I see ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... cheap, but I should not want to travel it again and be paid for doing so. Twelve persons were packed into a box not large enough for a cow, and no cabinet-maker ever dove-tailed the corners of his bureaus tighter than we did our knees and nether extremities. It is my lot to be blessed with abundance of stature, and none but tall persons can appreciate the misery of sitting for hours with their joints in an immovable vice. The closeness of the atmosphere—for ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor

... an instantaneous effect upon the hearers. Looby's face grew pale, and his nether lip began to tremble. The patient was dismayed, and the old gentlewoman concerned and perplexed. She earnestly besought the gentlemen to be reconciled to each other, and enter into a friendly consultation upon her daughter's distemper; ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... remarkably intelligent—dark sparkling eyes, dark hair curled in the most fashionable long corkscrew ringlets over her eyes and cheeks. She parted the ringlets to take a full view of us. The dress of her figure by no means suited the head and elegance of her attitude. What her nether weeds might be we could not distinctly see, but they seemed a coarse short petticoat like what Molly Bristow's children would wear. After surveying us and hearing our name was Edgeworth she smiled graciously and bid us follow her, ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)

... tell you what, Mr. Ringgan," he concluded, "I'll turn it over in my mind to-night and see if I can think of anything that'll do, and if I can I'll let you know. If we hadn't such a nether millstone to deal with, it would be easy enough to ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... its first dim days it had been perched on a crag that juts out from the overhanging mountain; there its life began, we hardly know when, in the dawn of Greek history. But it had been worn down in the fifth century between the upper and the nether millstone of the rival powers of Samos and Miletus. Early in the Macedonian age it was refounded. The old Acropolis was given up. Instead, a broad sloping terrace, or more exactly a series of terraces, ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield

... have a comic spine. My trunk kept getting in the way. And my nether limbs were superfluous. To do it properly you should be ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... reached the bridge of Chekmel,[8] When he spurr'd his raven steed so fiercely That the impetuous courser's feet sank under, And were crushed and broken on the pavement. In his deep perplexity and trouble, Dmitar took the saddle off his courser, Flung it on the courser's nether haunches, And he fled alone to Belgrad's fortress. First he sought, impatient, for his lady— 'Angelia! thou my bride all faithful! Tell me, tell me, hast thou kill'd my brother?' Sweet indeed was Angelia's answer: 'No! ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic

... the long snowdrop bed, which looked up at him like a nether Milky Way, the French casement of the window opposite softly opened, and a hand bordered by a glimmer of lace was stretched forth, from which he received a crisp little parcel,—bank-notes, apparently. He knew the hand, and held it long enough to press it to his lips, the ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... brother king of England, vsurped the croune, moste traiterouslie and wic- kedlie: this kyng Richard was small of stature, deformed, and ill shaped, his shoulders beared not equalitee, a pulyng face, yet of countenaunce and looke cruell, malicious, deceiptfull, bityng and chawing his nether lippe: of minde vnquiet, pregnaunt of witte, quicke and liue- ly, a worde and a blowe, wilie, deceiptfull, proude, arrogant [Sidenote: The tyme. The place.] in life and cogitacion bloodie. The fowerth daie of Iulie, he ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde

... But in the Tempest the scene is laid nowhere, or certainly in no country laid down on any map. Nowhere, then? At once nowhere and anywhere,—for it is in the soul of man, that still vexed island hung between the upper and the nether world, and liable to incursions from both. There is scarce a play of Shakespeare's in which there is such variety of character, none in which character has so little to do in the carrying on and development ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... devoted and affectionate children for ever; and, had she been as wise as she was powerful, even so would she have done. But, like the Egypt of olden times, she did but harden her heart against them all the more, even to the hardness of the nether mill-stone; and only sought how she could the more easily grind them into obedience and submission. She had grown to be mighty among the nations, this Britannia. Her armed legions told of her power by land; her ships of war and her ships of commerce whitened a ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady

... those convictions are sent of God like seasonable showers of rain, to keep the tillage of thy heart in good order, that the grace of fear may grow therein; but this stifling of convictions makes the heart as hard as a piece of the nether millstone. Therefore happy is he that receiveth conviction, for so he doth keep in the fear of God, and that fear thereby nourished in his soul; but cursed is he that doth otherwise—"Happy is the man that feareth ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... high turrets, in their airy sweep Require foundations, in proportion deep And lofty cedars as far upward shoot As to the nether heavens they drive the root; So low did her secure foundation lie, She was not ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... on the north side of the James below Henrico and across from Bermuda (Nether) Hundred, was one of the several hundreds annexed to, or included in, the corporation of Bermuda City. Settlement seems to have begun in 1613 although little is known of events in the early years. "Curls" evidently ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch

... numbers of books in a great library,—we are apt to over-rate each. However, those mountains, which seem to be covered with perennial snow, must be doubtless 8000 feet above the same level.[89] To obtain a complete view of them, you must ascend some of the nether hills. This we intended to do—but the rain of yesterday has disappointed all our hopes. The river Salz rolls rapidly along; being fed by mountain torrents. There are some pretty little villas in the neighbourhood, which are frequently ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... there came a ring at the bell and a knock at the door, and a rush along the nether passages, and the lady knew that he of whom she had been thinking had arrived. In olden days she had ever met him in the narrow passage, and, indifferent to the maid, she had hung about his neck and kissed him in the hall. But now she did not stir from the chair. She could ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... that melancholy had recast them in a serious mold. His face was clean-shaven, and his hair clipped, close to the skull. There was something eminently noble in the loftiness of the forehead, and at the same time there was something subtly cruel in the turn of the nether lip, as though the spirit and the flesh were constantly at war. He was young, possibly not older than the Chevalier, who ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath

... the laws inscribed in Runic characters on his spear. How he arrived in this position we do not know, any more than we know the origin of the Greek gods; indeed, in this respect and others there are parallels between the Greek and the Northern mythology. Wotan goes in fear lest the powers of the nether world usurp his domination, which he wants to make absolute. He makes a pact with the giants—the Titan forces of the earth—that be will give them Freia if they build him a castle, Valhalla, which he intends to fill with slain warriors in sufficient numbers to keep down his ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman

... the open window, with the double roll of a volume in his hands, reading slowly line by line of the old papyrus Romano-Grecian writings of one of the philosophers, and, as he came to each line's end, it slowly disappeared beneath the upper roll, while the nether was opened out to leave the next line ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn

... Cambrian, the Silurian, the Cornishman half-subjugated. The Saxon and Anglian enslaved the east, but scarcely crossed over the watershed of the western ocean. The Dane, in turn, enslaved the Saxon in East Anglia and Yorkshire. The Norman ground all down to a common servitude between the upper and nether millstones of the feudal system—the king and the nobleman. At the end of it all, Teutonic England was reduced to a patient condition of contented serfdom: it had accommodated itself to its environment: no ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... natural beauty, of rock and cascade, and all the properties of the poet: but the enthusiasm of Rousseau himself would sink from the stars to earth if he had marched since breakfast in a cloud of dust with a throat like the nether millstone. ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... naked body half extant from the coarse blanket which, drawn round her shoulders, is secured at her bosom by a skewer. Though tender of age, it looks wicked and sly, like a veritable imp of Roma. Huge rings of false gold dangle from wide slits in the lobes of her ears; her nether garments are rags, and her feet are cased in hempen sandals. Such is the wandering Gitana, such is the witch- wife of Multan, who has come to spae the fortune of the Sevillian countess and ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... of the Quantock hills, you know, and wrote some charming poems while he and Coleridge lived at Nether Stowey and Alforden; but just to see, in passing, Nether Stowey looks unattractive; and as for Bridgewater, not much farther on (where a red road has turned pink, then pale, then white with chalk), ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... gives to other powers the same freedom it would have itself,—not the ridiculous 'freedom to do right,' which in my mouth can only mean the freedom to do as I think right, but the freedom to do as they think right, or wrong either. After all, what accounts do the nether-most bounds of the universe owe to me? By what insatiate conceit and lust of intellectual despotism do I arrogate the right to know their secrets, and from my philosophic throne to play the only airs they shall march ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... the little band. Marie with difficulty restrained her tears, when she saw her uncle so completely discouraged. So many useless sufferings! so much labour lost! Penellan himself became ferocious in his ill-humour; he consigned everybody to the nether regions, and did not cease to wax angry at the weakness and cowardice of his comrades, who were more timid and tired, he said, than Marie, who would have gone to the end of the world ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne



Words linked to "Nether" :   chthonian, chthonic, low



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